Ad Nocendum Potentus Sumus
by tapioca two-step
Summary: Series of five one-shots about selected UT99 characters. What are the Tournament characters actually thinking as they go about their roles as 24th century gladiators?
1. Tempest

UT99. Just finished playing the UTIII single player missions. Malcolm is an annoying fucktard. Reaper is a whiny bitch. Ohmigawd. Let's get back to our roots, shall we?

**Tempest**

_Fuck, fuck, fuck!_

Gilfred used to be a miner. A foreman, to be precise, in charge of shafts 4C through 6F on the Tarydium mining asteroid LN224, owned by Liandri Mining Corporation. In fact, when he thought about it, there wasn't a space suitable for mining that _wasn't _owned by Liandri. It never really mattered to him that there was a huge monopoly on the only profitable trade since the rise of the New Earth Government; he had had a job, did it well, and thought that he was set until retirement.

Now, as he struggled to shrug his shoulders into the confines of an assault vest that was several sizes too big, all the while trying to dodge the electrical green beam that was being aimed at his back, he couldn't have been more wrong. And it was all Liandri's doing.

His supervisor had called him into the office one morning—about a year ago, actually—and had simultaneously fired him and signed him up for the Tournament roster. At first, Gilfred thought it was a joke. Tournament participation was a punishment for unruly miners, prisoners, and other riffraff that the NEG managed to scrounge off of the streets. It had actually started out as "no-holds-barred" fighting among deep-space miners, like himself, but somewhere along the way the whole process had become sanctioned and was turning into a gruesomely popular sport back on Earth. He had actually heard that there were _arenas _set up so people could watch contestants. The whole thought had turned his stomach.

But, as it turned out, it wasn't a joke. His supervisor insisted that there was more money in the Tournament, and, seeing that Gilfred was the lowest-paid foreman on the team, told him that it would be best if he entered and made a name for himself. Gilfred asked if he was expected to actually kill people. He was practically laughed off of the asteroid. He wasn't even given his last paycheck. It took Gilfred all of two hours during the ride back to Earth to realize that he had been cheated, in more ways than one. But what could he do? He had no family to complain to, and the rights of the individual had been stamped out since the NEG had been established.

So Gilfred the miner became Gilfred the Tournament competitor, a task which he was very, _very _bad at. He sometimes wondered if the Rules Board had allowed him to have a respawning device because they enjoyed laughing at his desperate attempts to frag his competitors, a task that usually ended up in him getting splattered against a wall like a cockroach. In fact, many of his Tournament companions called him "Roach" because of the way he fought—always firing from dark corners and scuttling out of the room when the melee became too intense.

He couldn't help it. He was a mild man by nature; small-boned and short-framed, with the only tough part of his body being his hands—but even they were shaky, and couldn't deal with the finesse of aiming and shooting weapons as complex and powerful as those that the Tournament provided. And so, most of the time he ended up running away in Deathmatch games. If he had been smart and adaptable, he would've turned this seemingly cowardly action into an important and useful tactic—but Gilfred didn't think that way. He simply ran until he became cornered, and then used whatever weapon he happened to have to try to defend himself from the competitor pursuing him. He was almost always fragged in such an instance. His rank dropped lower and lower on the Tournament ladder until he was fighting the "last chance" Deathmatches—where the Rules Board removed both of the contestant's respawners and sent them to fight until one or the other died. Or both—it really didn't matter to Liandri, and it certainly didn't matter to the NEG. It was all a game to them. In any case, Gilfred had noted that, lately, his respawning device had been malfunctioning every time he was fragged. It had taken him more than ten minutes to respawn in the last match, where it would have normally taken a second or two. Afterwards, his competitors had told him to contact the Rules Board to let them know that he had a faulty piece of equipment. He managed to get in contact with them, but they only said that 'they already knew about his respawner'. It didn't help that he hadn't been fragged in his latest matches. He suspected that his respawner had already been shut down.

An ear-splitting scream, emitted from the earpiece on his HUD headset, followed by the wet sound of human limbs bouncing around on the floor, shocked him back into his senses. His footsteps sounded altogether too loud as he dashed up a ramp to the arena's second of however many floors there were—he couldn't tell; he got lost quite easily. He saw a flash of a yellow uniform up ahead and immediately wedged himself behind a pillar close to a wall. On the quick flight to this arena from Liandri's headquarters, the contestants had all been assigned to the same level and had introduced themselves. The one in yellow was Tajheri, a common criminal who was forced into the Tournament, much like Gilfred himself was. She had told them that she wasn't doing too well in any of her matches and was getting a little desperate, and she had said it with such a sheepish look that the other contestants wondered what a mild girl like her was doing in the Tourney in the first place. However, if the first five minutes of the match were any indication, Tajheri was, as Darhl had so eloquently put it, 'a fucking liar.' Her 'desperation' honed her senses to the point of near-perfect sniping ability, and there was little chance that someone could walk into the same room as her and not get their head blasted off of their shoulders. The abandonment of her post probably meant that she had run out of ammunition. However, Gilfred didn't want to take the chance and surprise her. Best if he let her collect the bullets and then come back the way he came.

However, his plan dissolved like wet paper as the hulking form of Darhl came barreling down the hallway that Gilfred had just come from. The man was huge, dwarfing the other contestants with his nearly seven-foot height, which he most likely attained from his constant use of steroids. The Rules Board had no problem with illegal substance use—indeed, nearly seventy-five percent of Tournament contestants used them, according to the latest Liandri polls—and actually condoned the usage of enhancement drugs if the contestant did particularly well in Deathmatch arenas.

Darhl ran straight past Gilfred's hiding place; the miner peeked around the pillar just enough to see the action in the next room. Tajheri was in the middle of reloading her sniper rifle; she looked up just in time to see the huge man sprinting towards her, impact hammer in hand. She hissed something underneath her breath and spun around on her heel, trying desperately to gain some distance between her and the fully-charged weapon in Darhl's hand.

Too late. Darhl took a flying leap and planted the hammer's muzzle directly on the small of Tajheri's back. He released his finger from the trigger; the spring-loaded piston burst forth with a hiss of air and slammed into Tajheri's spine. The woman's body bent backwards at a ninety degree angle and was flung forwards into the side of a staircase. Gilfred closed his eyes and swallowed, hard. His HUD display changed to show the status of all five contestants. He was last—of course—and trailed the leader, Anna, by 8 frags. Darhl's frag had put him into third place.

Tajheri's body was still lying in a twisted heap in the next room when her voice came through the contestants' HUD earpieces. "God damn it," she said after respawning. "Do you have to use that goddamn hammer all the time, you fucking idiot?"

"You're just pissed because I took third place from yeh," Darhl's voice taunted back; he sounded genuinely happy. "Now, it's back to the circus for that other bitch they've put 'ere—where are yeh, Anna?"

"Right here."

Gilfred winced at the tell-tale sound of the flak cannon's shell hitting soft flesh. Darhl didn't even have enough time to scream before the red-hot chunks of metal ripped his body to shreds. The ex-miner took the chance to backtrack back down to the second floor and see if he could find a better weapon than the Razorjack that he currently held. In the hands of a competent fighter, the Rajorjack was a one-way ticket to as many headshots as the wielder desired, but Gilfred found it nearly impossible to hit moving targets. On top of that, the circular disks had a tendency to ricochet off of the walls for almost a minute after they were fired, and more than once he found himself with negative frag points because he decapitated himself with his own shots.

There was an Enforcer lying on the ground up ahead. It was a very simple pistol, with a mild amount of kickback that Gilfred could handle if he put his mind to it. Coupled with the one already at his hip, he might be able to get a frag or two in before the match ended. He ran towards it, looking from side to side as he grabbed it off of the floor.

"Well, hello, Roach."

A rocket hit the ground less than three feet away from him; immediately he was covered with bits of shrapnel from the splash damage. His assault vest, which had taken most of the damage, fell uselessly off of his shoulders. He looked up; Damascus was hiding in the rafters, and the barrel of his rocket launcher was pointed straight at him.

He didn't bother shooting. His miner's reflexes, which dictated that the first course of action that he should take in a dangerous situation is to separate himself from the threat that was being posed to him, demanded that he get out of the area, and he did just that.

Gilfred was very, very good at running. Unfortunately for him, Damascus was very, very good at aiming. Since the hallway that Gilfred had chosen to flee down was about fifty feet in length, all Damascus had to do was aim a full chamber of rockets towards the entrance of the room that Gilfred was headed for. Luckily, though, two of the rockets hit the ground early, throwing the ex-miner through the doorway a split second before the other four rockets reached their target. He landed on his side and skidded to a halt against the wall, but he hadn't been fragged. This was a first.

"Way to make an entrance, Roach," Tajheri called to him. She was situated on the uppermost level of this room; he could see her banana-colored suit standing out brightly from behind some boxes. She had acquired another sniper rifle, but couldn't hit him in her current position; instead she was aiming one floor below her, where Darhl and Anna were duking it out with a shock rifle and a GES biorifle, respectively. The sniper's bullets bit into the concrete at their feet, but they were dodging and jumping so much that she couldn't get a clean shot in.

"Stop movin', yeh fuckin' cum-dumpster!" Darhl switched his shock rifle for the close-combat flak cannon, but Anna released a fully-charged canister of biowaste and lobbed the radioactive green glob directly onto Darhl's chestplate. Seeing her opponent with a 500% load of the deadly Tarydium byproduct sticking to his armor, Anna smiled and waved as it detonated and effectively reduced Darhl to a puddle of giblets.

That was all the pause that Tajheri needed. Her finger squeezed the trigger of her sniper rifle as she barked, "Sit down!" The bullet caught Anna through the throat and she went down instantly. Gilfred looked down at the Enforcer in his hand. It was shaking. He gripped his wrist with his opposite hand and hunkered down underneath the staircase, hoping that the shadows would hide him if Damascus came looking for him. The ex-assassin was a little too serious to be fighting in such a throwaway Tournament game, but he supposed it gave the audience someone to root for—or against.

Speaking of an audience—Gilfred looked up as Tajheri celebrated her frag against the current leader by sticking both of her middle fingers up at the room's rotating camera, which gave live feed to Tournament fans, sitting at home, watching the games on Holovision. It pivoted on a large-rotating boom and was one of the hundreds of cameras that were set up in the arena to give the audience every possible angle of watching the Tournament. In the higher ladders, cameras were actually equipped with a hovering mechanism, and followed contestants around as they played their bloody game.

"Ya like that?" Tajheri demanded of the camera. Gilfred glanced down the hallway that he had just exited. He might have time—ten shots wasn't that much, was it? He could get some shots in when Tajheri wasn't looking, and perhaps she was already wounded—but he had to do it quickly, because Damascus was certain to be coming.

He pulled the other Enforcer out of its holster at his hip and aimed both of them at Tajheri's back. His hands were shaking uncontrollably now, but it couldn't be helped. He squeezed both of the triggers. The bullets spattered up the wall and into the boxes that the woman was positioned behind. She yelped and ducked for cover.

"What the fuck, Roach?" she demanded, slinging her rifle into her hand. "You don't shoot at a person when their back is turned!"

"I beg to differ."

Tajheri barely had time to look below her at the doorway before Damascus' trio of rockets effectively smeared her against the back wall. Without missing a beat he stalked towards where Gilfred was crouched, reached underneath the stairs, and dragged the miner out by his leg. He practically hoisted Gilfred into the air and dropped him, unceremoniously, on his head.

"What the _fuck _is your problem?" he hissed, planting his foot on the miner's chest. Gilfred dropped both of his weapons out of sheer terror.

"I—I didn't know that you couldn't fire at someone's back—please, don't do this."

"I'm not talking about _that,_" Damascus snarled. The gold and black faceplate he wore was flecked with blood. "Rules don't matter in this game. Apparently it's still taken you _this long _to figure it out."

Gilfred swallowed with some difficulty. "So what's the problem?"

Damascus jammed the metal barrel of his rocket launcher into Gilfred's throat. "The problem is, I've been watching you, and you are singlehandedly most _idiotic _and _infuriating _person I've ever had the displeasure of fighting in the arena. I can't even call it 'fighting', because all you do is hide like a little pussy. You enter the arena and you _run away _until somebody else wins the match. That is unforgivable."

"But—but I can't win. There's no way I can ever win. I was suckered into the Tournament—"

"I DON'T _CARE_." Damascus' voice practically blew out the audio system on Gilfred's headset. The assassin's black and gold armor glittered under the harsh lights as he lifted his foot from Gilfred's chest and began stalking around him.

"Do you think that contestants _like _being here? Do you think that _any _of the non-paid Tourney participants want this for themselves? You are _dead fucking wrong. _And yet, we fight. We fight for the chance to get out of this Tournament and back to living our lives. Even though there's hardly a chance for that to happen, we still _try_.

"But you—you, who worked on the most dangerous mining asteroid in Liandri possession for most of your life—you shrivel and balk in every match you're signed up for. These matches are chances for you to _leave _the fucking Tournament, and yet you'd rather hide in the shadows, exactly as your nickname implies. Looking at you makes me sick."

Damascus pressed down on the trigger of his rocket launcher; one by one, the mechanism loaded the rockets into the barrel of the gun. "I'm going to kill you now," Damascus said matter-of-factly. "And when you respawn, I want you to start participate like a normal contestant. I want you to be fucking _angry_. I want you to fucking _fight, _you worthless cockroach—you piece of shit!"

Gilfred's eyes grew wide with panic. "No—wait, I'm not sure—!"

All six rockets hit Gilfred at point-blank range and effectively turned his body into a leaky piece of meat.

After a short pause, Damascus made his way out of the room, dropping the empty rocket launcher next to a supply box and switching it for a sleek shock rifle.

A noise from behind caused him to pause. He looked over his shoulder, disinterested. Anna had dropped down from the third level and was looking at the red stain on the floor. "You do know that his respawning device was offline." She said, cutting a sharp glance at him.

Damascus shrugged. "Perhaps."

Off in the distance, Darhl's loud, celebratory "Oh, yeah!" as he fragged Tajheri interrupted the quiet silence between the two contestants staring at the remains of the ex-miner.

"I didn't know that you were a compassionate man," Anna said after a moment. "But that was the best thing that you could have done for him. I would have tried to reason with him, but you got straight to the point. That takes a lot of courage."

"Not for me. It was a piece of cake. I can't stand people like that."

Anna grabbed both of the Enforcers and spun them around on her index fingers. "Well, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. I, for one, feel sorry for him."

"Anna."

She holstered her guns. "Hmm?"

"I'm giving you ten seconds before I open fire on your ass. We don't have time to be buddy-buddy."

The current frag leader smiled. "Fair enough."

She took off in the other direction. After casting a disdainful glance at the Gilfred's remains, Damascus began his manhunt. He would be able to intercept Anna if he hurried.


	2. Facing Worlds

**Facing Worlds**

"They must be sucking each other off down there."

Kyla, the leader of the group of mercenaries and Special ops deserters known as the Blood Reavers, the third-most popular team in the Liandri Grand Tournament, sighed and paced the white marble entryway of the red flag base, which was a monstrously tall tower, nearly a quarter of a mile high, that stood on the extreme end of the Liandri-owned "Facing Worlds" asteroid. On the other side of the half-mile-long space rock, an exact twin of the red base jutted into the black abyss, its blue banners fluttering lightly in the windless air. This asteroid was Liandri's finest acquisition, and the company had spent trillions of dollars making it Tourney-worthy. It was an especially dangerous arena in its own right—what with it being an asteroid hovering thousands of miles above Earth. With two huge gravity and oxygen generators built into the jutting rock below the towers, there was very little chance for competitors to go flying into space—that is, if they watched their step and didn't get blown off by the opposing team. However, the occasional unfortunate misstep did happen, but even if someone did find themselves spinning through space, competitors called death on Facing Worlds "the most beautiful oblivion you could ever hope for."

Kyla stared, impressed, at the sight that sprawled in front of her. The pitch darkness of space was rudely and gorgeously interrupted by the spinning blue of Earth's sphere on one side, while on the other side of the asteroid, the white face of the Moon loomed like a pearl on black velvet. The orbit of the asteroid was such that it spun in a gentle circle—not end over end, like a windmill, but rotating on a horizontal axis that had the Earth and the moon arching in graceful curves above, to the sides, and below the asteroid at intervals. The whole place forced Kyla to realize that she was very, very small in the scheme of things, but looking at the majesty of her home planet from this bird's eye location, she didn't really mind at all. The whole scene gave her a sense of peace—which is what she desperately needed before this very important, very intense, and very highly anticipated Capture the Flag battle.

And the opposing team was _late. _

Another Blood Reaver, whose childlike face was painted with green and brown camouflage stripes, took off her emerald beret and fluffed her curly black hair. "Ja think that they forfeit without telling us?" she asked with a heavy Spanish accent. Kyla shook her head, running a gauntleted hand over the Nali cross tattoo on her bare stomach. As far as tournament gear was concerned, Reavers women had more coverage that most: full pants and knee-high boots, but that kind of wardrobe came with a price. The Liandri Rules Board specifically stated that contestants were there for the entertainment of the people, and the women—and some of the men—had to be in various states of undress. If Kyla remembered correctly, the manual stated that "certain parts should be showing during Tournament activity so that the viewers might witness the strain on the human body being pushed to the absolute limits." She thought that was a particularly poetical line of bullshit. Being the leader of the team, she had had to choose between running around with her midsection showing or showing her ass off in what was essentially a metal-plated thong. Considering that there were assault vests to help with the problem of the women having their organs blown out of their bodies, she chose the former, much to the chagrin of her male teammates. Her returning argument was reasoning that if the women had to wear butt-floss, she'd force the men to wear it, too. The subject had been subsequently dropped. As for the tattoo, it was standard for Reavers teammates. Kyla had gotten it several years previous, after the announcement was made that hybrid Skaarj were going to be fighting in the Tourney. The Skaarj were known to most everyone as the Galactic Assholes for nearly destroying the peaceful planet of Na Pali, and no one much appreciated their participation, which was clearly for NEG experimentation. The lizard-men still went cross-eyed with rage when they saw the religious symbol on the stomachs of their rivals, which always filled Kyla with a sick sense of pride. Of course, it wasn't as though she cared about the fate of the Nali planet. The Reavers were known to have the most selfish personal reasons for fighting in the Tourney out of all the upper-ladder teams; she only sported the tattoo as a silent protest against the inner workings of the very, very corrupt NEG.

"They haven't forfeited," Kyla said, trying to keep the weariness from creeping into her voice. "It's an all male-team, and they're the current big-city favorites, which means this is another chance for them to show their cocks off to their loving fans. Just be patient. I heard that the translocation system has been acting up lately."

"No other team could arrive two hours late for a match and not get disqualified," Boris muttered around his cigarette. Kyla smiled at one of the two male teammates she had selected for this match. Boris was quite charismatic. He was light on his feet, and almost carefree when fighting, and was the life of the Reavers' activity outside of the Tournament. His attitude belied a troubled past, which included deserting from his Earth Defense Force unit while they were fighting near Io. His participation in the Tournament was sentenced to him by the NEG: his life now belonged to Liandri, and if the Reavers didn't come out on top during the team finals, he would be sentenced to be executed by the current Tournament champion—Xan Kriegor.

He was literally fighting for his life in the Tournament. Not unlike herself.

"That's because they're a hit with the viewers," Kyla said gently. "They can get away with this kind of shit…oh?"

Across the asteroid, a cluster of five blue beams shimmered into the air and disappeared as quickly as they had come. Seconds later, the computerized voice of a woman with a heavy British accent echoed over the earpieces in both teams' HUD headsets: "_The match has begun._"

"S'about fucken time," Mariana said, repositioning her beret and slinging her Enforcer out of its holster. Kyla furrowed her brow as she swept her eyes over her teammates. Boris, Mariana…and….?

"Hey, Ramirez, where'd you go?" she asked impatiently, cupping her hand over the microphone next to her mouth.

"I'm in position." The deep, smooth bass of the Reavers' champion sniper rumbled in her ear. She rolled her eyes, putting both hands on her hips.

"In position _where, _Ramirez?" She craned her neck backwards, staring up the intricately carved front face of the red tower, trying to spot her fourth teammate. "And when did you get there?"

"I'm on the top of the tower. The blue team has mobilized; there are two scouts heading our way. They have one sniper, mid-tower position, and their fourth member is—oh, no, wait, there he is. He's camping by the flag. And he's air-humping in our direction."

"Feh. Typical." Kyla activated her HUD; her health and ammo stats, and that of her team members, filled the edges of her vision. The timer at the top showed that the team had thirty minutes to score three flag captures to win the match. "We're gonna have to go ahead and start without Jayce, then. Short-handed again. Son of a bitch."

"She had to get her Med-Card updated. This'll be easy-peasy," Boris said cheerfully. "Where d'ya want me, boss?"

The telltale report of Ramirez's sniper rifle being fired filled the air. Kyla paused as the computerized female voice declared, "_Red team, first blood."_

"Mariana, you head out with Boris. Try to get to that heath booster keg before one of the blue team does, please. Ramirez will cover for you. You hear that, sniper?"

"Got it."

"Good." Kyla chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully for a moment. "I'm going stick here for a few and see if you two on your own can't earn our first capture. If it looks like you're having trouble I'll come and help. We'll be sitting pretty if we come out on top—the winnings are _huge. _Now get your asses out there."

"Affirmative, Red Leader."

Boris and Mariana began to make their way up the gradual slope towards the middle of the asteroid. Kyla turned on her heel, then, remembering something, and called back at her retreating teammate, "And put that cancer stick out, you stupid fuck!"

Trusting that he'd follow orders, she dashed into the tower and, making sure the flag was secure in its base, slipped into the alcove in the pillar in the middle of the room and walked through the swimming blue portal encased there. She stepped out onto the uppermost top level of the tower, walking up a short ramp to find herself nearly fourteen hundred feet in the air. The most disorienting thing about it was that the sky's rotation seemed to have slowed down from the time when she was on the ground—probably because she wasn't looking up and comparing a solid object with a moving sky.

In front of her, kneeling patiently behind a pillar that was topped with a bright crimson flame, Ramirez was calmly counting .80 caliber sniper bullets into an ammunition box by his side. His black eyes were covered by a pair of HUD-enhanced magnification goggles, and his beret was crisply pulled to the side of his head. He glanced up once and nodded curtly. "Red Leader."

_Always so infuriatingly polite. _"If Liandri allows us to play five to four again, I'll eat my foot," she said instead, looking down at the retreating figures of the other two Reavers members as she picked up a sniper rifle from its housing in the weapons cache. She held it against her shoulder as she activated the scope's x10 zoom lens.

…And nearly fell off of the tower as a huge bullet ricocheted off of the marble plating at her feet, whizzing so close to her leg that she felt the wind shift her uniform pants. As it was, she started so badly that she dropped her rifle; it bounced off of the edge of the tower and began a long, slow tumble down to the ground. She barely suppressed a yelp and pressed herself behind the pillar opposite Ramirez and looked at him, wide-eyed.

"You should be a little more careful," Ramirez said without missing a beat. "Raw Steel has a sniping tower, too." 

Then, with the cool, practiced aim of an assassin of the highest caliber, he brought his rifle to his shoulder and, after a split second pause, fired, the shot making Kyla's ears ring. Instantly there was an update from the computer-voice. "_Headshot_."

Ramirez rested the butt of the rifle against the cool marble flooring and inclined his head towards the Reavers' leader. "It's all clear for you to stand in plain sight now, Kyla."

"Ha, ha," she said humorlessly. "Very funny."

"_Blue flag taken."_

Kyla's eyes widened. Boris and Mariana must have been _clocking _to get to the blue base that quickly. "Wow. They've gotten better at this game." She looked over as Ramirez stifled a smirk. "What? It's not like I could run that fast."

Ramirez's mouth quirked up in a slight smile. "Of course not. Not at your age."

"It's not because I'm old, if that's what you're saying," Kyla said irritably, loading up at the weapons cache. This time she favored the shock rifle; its devastating combination attack would come in handy for holding off Slain and his goonies during the distance sprint she would have to make after she snagged their flag. "It's because I like to take my time."

"How old were you, exactly, when you headed up Green's World?"

_The largest miner's rebellion in history? Three thousand miners standing up for their individual rights; murdering overseers, desecrating mine shafts to the point where they were totally destroyed, refusing to do a single day's work for the already corrupted Liandri corporation. And they were all rallied, all convinced, all following the orders of…._

"I was seventeen."

Ramirez drummed his fingers on his knee padding. "And they chased you across ten star systems for five years—"

"Thirteen systems," Kyla interrupted reflexively.

"—Thirteen systems for five years, and now, twenty-six years later, you're here. You're almost fifty years old, Kyla. I classify that as 'old'."

Kyla frowned again, deeper this time, and finished loading up at the cache. "Well, then, I guess grandma's going downstairs now to knit some stockings," she said sullenly. Ramirez said nothing until she approached the portal exit, and then reached out and caught her by her sleekly muscular upper arm.

"But you know," he said, staring into her wide, dark eyes, "that doesn't mean that you aren't the classiest and sexiest fifty year old woman that I've ever seen."

She laughed this time, lightly slapping Ramirez on the cheek. "You tease!" She knew, however, that he wasn't lying. She still retained her youthful features, but her face only belied her age because time hadn't exactly caught up with her yet. She had made so many wormhole-jumps and hyperspace runs during her five years of evading NEG forces that she had lost upwards of twenty years' worth of aging. Her aging had been 'graceful', if only for the fact that she had warped so much that she had barely aged at all. However, in ten years or so, time was supposed to catch up with her, and the transformation from a woman who looked to be in her early thirties to a grandmother in her sixties would happen nearly overnight. Kyla didn't want to admit it, but she wanted to be dead before that happened. She rather liked not having to worry about the creaking joints and weakening muscles of the elderly.

Her spacing out cost the team dearly.

"_Red flag taken." _The HUD-earpiece nearly whispered the information; in contrast, alarms all over the red base began shrieking in ear-splitting treble pitches. Kyla and Ramirez exchanged a quick glance; she nodded curtly at him before dashing through the blue portal. Emerging once more in the main flag chamber, she paused only to reorient herself and then dashed towards the yawning entrance to the red tower. There were four possible exits to the tower—from the top, the Redeemer chamber or the secondary sniping awning, and the main entryway. The enemy flag carrier had to cross the half-mile long distance to get back to his own base, so she still had a chance of intercepting him.

"D'ya see him?" she asked, failing to spot anyone in blue armor waltzing around the base. She trotted out of the capital-A shaped entryway and stared up at the face of the tower. "Hello?"

There was a faint crackling sound over the headset, and then a body was flung off the pinnacle of the red tower. It bounced off of several of the ledges protruding from the tower's body and came to a crunching stop at her feet.

Ramirez. She took a step backwards from the corpse and kept her eyes on the tower's sides. The enemy flag carrier was almost certainly making his way down the tower's sides by dropping from ledge to ledge on a cautious journey to the ground. Now, of course, he only had two paths to get back to his team's base, and Kyla had both of them in her sight.

There was the sound of fluttering off to her left, followed by a light metallic thump. She swung the barrel of her shock rifle towards the sound, but lowered it when she saw that the red flag was lying on the ground next to the tower's base.

_Did he drop it? _She slung the rifle over her shoulder and walked over towards the fallen banner, bending down to wrap her hand around the metal pole on which it waved—

—and was immediately knocked backwards by something cold and hard hitting her stomach. She got a split-second chance to see what it was—a grenade from a rocket launcher—before it detonated inches from her body. The explosion didn't frag her right off the bat, but the shock wave it produced knocked her into the air; she landed on her side at the very edge of the asteroid and skidded straight off of solid ground.

_Dammit, _she thought as she began freefalling into the airless vacuum. _I should have seen that coming. _

As soon as she tumbled past the boundaries of the oxygenated atmosphere that was generated around Facing Worlds, her vision went red, then black, as the vacuum of space effectively pulverized her body. She respawned next to the red tower, thoroughly pissed. She was losing the red team's flag; she had to book it if she wanted to get it back.

The enemy flag carrier—her HUD flashed the name 'Kregore' as she drew him into her sights—was approaching the middle of the arena, the red flag trailing behind him like a crimson target. What was slowing him down considerably was the fully-loaded rocket launcher he was hauling along with him; Kyla decided to use this to her advantage.

Slinging her shock rifle into position, she switched from primary to alternate fire, launching a ball of brilliant blue plasma the size of a bowling ball that barreled straight for Kregore's retreating back. She quickly she reset the gun's operation to primary fire, and waited until the plasma sphere crested the top of the asteroid's gentle incline, just as Kregore was reaching that exact same spot. She compressed her fingers down onto the rifle's trigger, and in a flash, a beam of blue shot out of the barrel and slammed into the energy core she had fired. The impact of the high-energy plasmas bloomed neatly in a sapphire explosion that sent Kregore—and the red flag—spinning off of the map.

"_Red flag dropped._" The HUD voice announced, and, a moment later, stated, "_Red flag returned." _

_Thank God for the automatic flag respawning system, _Kyla thought. _I don't think that any of us would want to go swimming through zero gee to get it back. _

"Ramirez, are you back in position yet?"

"Affirmative, Red Leader."

"Contact!" Mariana's sounded desperately out of breath. Kyla's head snapped towards the sound of incoming gunshots. Mariana and Boris—the latter carrying the blue flag—were stumbling down the red team's side of the asteroid, twisting their bodies in a clumsy dance to avoid the random bullet pings and shockwaves that hailed onto them from three of the five enemy team members that were pursing them towards the base.

Without warning an .80 caliber bullet sliced directly through Kyla's thigh, splitting the bone in two and tearing through her muscles and tendons. She went down heavily on her opposite knee, dropping her shock rifle and gripping handfuls of dirt in a reflexive expression of agony. More of the enemy sniper's bullets pinged the rock around her, showering her with dust. Another bullet connected with the soft skin connecting her neck and her shoulder and her head jerked to the side.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit," she chanted as blood began to spill from between her clenched teeth. Even if players were able to respawn indefinitely after being fragged, it didn't mean that they didn't feel pain. Every bullet wound that was inflicted upon them was sensed as acutely as if it were their last agony. She dimly noticed that Ramierez was approaching her side, but consciousness slipped away from her as she bled out onto the ground.

_Another fucking frag, _she thought furiously when she respawned, throwing her Enforcer down in her rage.

"Fuck it," she said sharply. "I'm using St. Jude."

'St. Jude' was the Reavers' nickname for the Redeemer, the miniature nuclear device that Liandri had originally designed for the destruction of mining asteroids after they were exhausted of their resources. After witnessing a single Redeemer missile reduce a continent-sized space rock into invisible dust, the NEG took the design, modified it _very _slightly, and paid for it to be used in Tournament competitions. It had two firing modes, the second of which was particularly devastating, considering that the wielder could remotely pilot the huge device to any point on the map that they wished. The blast radius and destructive power of the missile was so great that only three Tournament arenas could withstand repeated Redeemer strikes to their landscapes. Kyla greatly mistrusted the missile's use, after seeing one team member of an opposing team successfully slaughter himself and his entire group after his mishandled the equipment, and she especially disliked having to use it on this ancient asteroid. However, desperate times called for desperate measures, and she sure as hell wasn't going to lose to a jerkoff team whose captain had probably been mooning her tower since the match began.

"Raw Steel's gonna be on our ass in a second," Ramirez informed the team. "Whatever you're planning, Red Leader, you'd better to it quickly."

Kyla retrieved the miniature nuclear device from its alcove in the tower and positioned herself directly in front of the central pillar in the base level. About 500 feet in front of her were her targets: three steroid-junkie Tourney-rats dressed in blue, firing upon Boris and Mariana as if the latter were bugs that they needed to exterminate.

She slid her right foot backwards, bracing her entire body against the pillar. Closing one eye and staring straight down the sight on top of the Redeemer, she took a deep breath.

_I must do anything for a point. I live for frags. I live for points. I live to win. _

"Reavers, I'm going hot!" she called into her mouthpiece, clamping her fingers down onto the red trigger on the bottom of the device. It trembled for half a second before it bucked viciously upwards in her hands, almost slamming into her head. The metal grew instantly too hot to touch and she dropped it with a yelp.

The missile sliced through the air as quickly as a lightning bolt, leaving behind it a trail of smoke and the bitter smell of rocket fuel. Kyla watched with her heart in her throat as the projectile tore a ragged path towards the five humans, whispering between Boris and Mariana and slamming into the ground at the blue team members' feet.

The detonation temporarily blinded Kyla, and she covered both of her eyes as the roar of shattering atoms split the silence of the asteroid. Pieces of pulverized rock, sharp as glass, blasted into her body and cut to ribbons her exposed skin. She huddled against the tower's central pillar until the wind died down and something clattered to her feet.

She looked down. It was the blue team's flag, blown towards the tower by the force of the Redeemer's wrath. Boris and Mariana were nowhere to be seen. Of course not—it would take them several seconds to respawn. They hadn't been anywhere near a survivable distance from the missile when it hit the ground.

"Kyla." Ramirez's voice was solemn. "That was a little…overkill, wasn't it?"

She was the Blood Reavers' leader. She knew what the situation had called for and acted accordingly.

She had done the same at Green's World. People gave their lives because she had said so. They followed her orders. She was older, now. She could ask the same of anyone on her team and they'd do what she wished. She had been a leader all her life. Asking others to die was as natural to her as breathing.

In the Tournament, it was much easier to deal with tactical mistakes, anyway. People came back. Like vengeful spirits, except they were alive. Death wasn't real for them. Not yet.

She picked up the blue team's flag in one trigger-weary hand and tapped it against her own banner, waving redder than the sun in its quiet alcove.

"_Red team has taken the lead." _

She would, one day, buy her way out of the Tournament.

Until then, over and over, she would die.


End file.
